tobias tiny junonia

Since I awarded the SAND DOLLAR gold, silver, and bronze medal trophies this week, I knew what I needed to do when I saw this tiny juvenile JUNONIA. I had to award another special seashell medal for the summer shelling Olympics.

The Platinum Shelling medal!

platinum sand dollar medal

The Platinum Shelling Medal goes to Tobias from Fort Myers!

tobias juvie junonia

As we all know, finding a JUNONIA is what we all strive for here in Sanibel and Captiva, but to find such a tiny perfect specimen is very rare… not to even mention how stinkin adorable it is. He found this trophy shell at Blind Pass Captiva near the bridge right where McKenzie found hers last week. Congratulations, Tobias!

tobias juvenile ap junonia

So speaking of rare finds, Donnie found another killer shell along with his bronze medal winning seashells this weekend. It’s a little beat up but it really looks like a juvenile QUEEN HELMET!

queen helmet captiva

You can find QUEEN HELMETS in the Caribbean, the Keys and on the east coast of Florida but they are not native to our area so this is a really rare find too. It’s amazing this made it here mostly in one piece with just some bumps and bruises.

queen helmet seashell florida

Okay, I already gave you a “medal” Donnie, so you’ll just have to add this shell to your other winners. hahaha Which here is a photo of the HELMET with his other awesome finds. He found part of a JUNONIA!

junonia helmet

Local sheller Michelle (with Eric) found a piece of JUNONIA too this weekend.

michelle eric junonia

Evan found a SAND DOLLAR and a JUNONIA piece too! Wow! They all found the JUNONIAS at low tide in the same place Tobias found his- Blind Pass.

Evan sand dollar junonia

 Jeannie from Tampa found some great shells too…

jeannie worm shell turban

She found this nice WORM SHELL (Woohoo! WORMIE!), some pretty CALICO SCALLOPS and a bright orange CHESTNUT TURBAN (I wish I had gotten a better picture of that- i love those shells!).

jeannie seashells

On the Sanibel side of Blind Pass I met the nicest family from Michigan plucking seashells right out of the surf. Meet Gail, Larry, Laura, Kevin and in the front row- Ella, Theo and Emma.

family on sanibel

They had just gotten to the beach but they all already found some faces…

hands of shells

Congrats again to Tobias! Thanks for tweeting this photo!

tobias moran junonia